Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review

No new features.

In June of 2004, during the WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs revealed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to developers and the public for the first time. When the finished product arrived in April of 2005, Tiger was the biggest, most important, most feature-packed release in the history of Mac OS X by a wide margin. Apple's marketing campaign reflected this, touting "over 150 new features."

All those new features took time. Since its introduction in 2001, there had been at least one major release of Mac OS X each year. Tiger took over a year and a half to arrive. At the time, it definitely seemed worth the wait. Tiger was a hit with users and developers. Apple took the lesson to heart and quickly set expectations for the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard. Through various channels, Apple communicated its intention to move from a 12-month to an 18-month release cycle for Mac OS X. Leopard was officially scheduled for "spring 2007."

Apple even went so far as to list all 300 new features on its website. As it turns out, "spring" was a bit optimistic. Leopard actually shipped at the end of October 2007, nearly two and a half years after Tiger. Did Leopard really have twice as many new features as Tiger? That's debatable. What's certain is that Leopard included a solid crop of new features and technologies, many of which we now take for granted. (For example, have you had a discussion with a potential Mac user since the release of Leopard without mentioning Time Machine? I certainly haven't.)

Mac OS X appeared to be maturing. The progression was clear: longer release cycles, more features. What would Mac OS X 10.6 be like? Would it arrive three and a half years after Leopard? Would it and include 500 new features? A thousand?

At WWDC 2009, Bertrand Serlet announced a move that he described as "unprecedented" in the PC industry.

Mac OS X 10.6 - Read Bertrand's lips: No New Features!

That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: "Snow Leopard." Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the "150+ new features" in Tiger and the "300 new features" in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

It probably helps to know that the "0 New Features" slide came at the end of an hour-long presentation detailing the major new APIs and technologies in Snow Leopard. It was also quickly followed by a back-pedaling ("well, there is one new feature...") slide describing the addition of Microsoft Exchange support. In isolation, "no new features" may seem to imply stagnation. In context, however, it served as a developer-friendly affirmation.

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: "We're adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we're going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We're not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we're going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers."

But if Snow Leopard is a love letter to developers, is it a Dear John letter to users? You know, those people that the marketing department might so crudely refer to as "customers." What's in it for them? Believe it or not, the sales pitch to users is actually quite similar. As exhausting as it has been for developers to keep up with Apple's seemingly never-ending stream of new APIs, it can be just as taxing for customers to stay on top of Mac OS X's features. Exposé, a new Finder, Spotlight, a new Dock, Time Machine, a new Finder again, a new iLife and iWorkalmost every year, and on and on. And as much as developers hate bugs in Apple's APIs, users who experience those bugs as application crashes have just as much reason to be annoyed.

Enter Snow Leopard: the release where we all get a break from the new-features/new-bugs treadmill of Mac OS X development. That's the pitch.

Uncomfortable realities

But wait a second, didn't I just mention an "hour-long presentation" about Snow Leopard featuring "major new APIs and technologies?" When speaking to developers, Apple's message of "no new features" is another way of saying "no new bugs." Snow Leopard is supposed to fix old bugs without introducing new ones. But nothing says "new bugs, coming right up" quite like major new APIs. So which is it?

Similarly, for users, "no new features" connotes stability and reliability. But if Snow Leopard includes enough changes to the core OS to fill an hour-long overview session at WWDC more than a year before its release, can Apple really make good on this promise? Or will users end up with all the disadvantages of a feature-packed release like Tiger or Leopard—the inevitable 10.x.0 bugs, the unfamiliar, untried new functionality—but without any of the actual new features?

Yes, it's enough to make one quite cynical about Apple's real motivations. To throw some more fuel on the fire, have a look at the Mac OS X release timeline below. Next to each release, I've included a list of its most significant features.

Mac OS X release timeline

That curve is taking on a decidedly droopy shape, as if it's being weighed down by the ever-increasing number of new features. (The releases are distributed uniformly on the Y axis.) Maybe you think it's reasonable for the time between releases to stretch out as each one brings a heavier load of goodies than the last, but keep in mind the logical consequence of such a curve over the longhorn haul.

And yeah, there's a little upwards kick at the end for 10.6, but remember, this is supposed to be the "no new features" release. Version 10.1 had a similar no-frills focus but took a heck of a lot less time to arrive.

Looking at this graph, it's hard not to wonder if there's something siphoning resources from the Mac OS X development effort. Maybe, say, some project that's in the first two or three major releases of its life, still in that steep, early section of its own timeline graph. Yes, I'm talking about the iPhone, specifically iPhone OS. The iPhone business has exploded onto Apple's balance sheets like no other product before, even the iPod. It's also accruing developers at an alarming rate.

It's not a stretch to imagine that many of the artists and developers who piled on the user-visible features in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 have been reassigned to iPhone OS (temporarily or otherwise). After all, Mac OS X and iPhone OS share the same core operating system, the same language for GUI development, and many of the same APIs. Some workforce migration seems inevitable.

And let's not forget the "Mac OS X" technologies that we later learned were developed for the iPhone and just happened to be announced for the Mac first (because the iPhone was still a secret), like Core Animation and code signing. Such conspiracy theories certainly aren't helped by WWDC keynote snubs and other indignities suffered by Mac OS X and the Mac in general since the iPhone arrived on the scene. And so, on top of everything else, Snow Leopard is tasked with restoring some luster to Mac OS X.

Got all that? A nearly two-year development cycle, but no new features. Major new frameworks for developers, but few new bugs. Significant changes to the core OS, but more reliability. And a franchise rejuvenation with few user-visible changes.

454 Reader Comments

Originally posted by Graham Perks:The graph of releases on page one omits a big release; perhaps the most important one since 10.0: the Intel port of Tiger. You can also count that as a "0 new features" release, too.

That was a real zero-new-features release, no scare quotes, and as such I don't count it as a major release in the same sense as all the others (and neither does Apple, as evidenced by their choice of version number for it). It was important for the business and they did an impressive job, but it wasn't the same type of thing as the 10.x releases, all of which contained many more functional changes and new APIs.

Originally posted by hanzoff:So basically this is a must have for fanboys, but the average user has no need for it? Sorry, but I am not going to spend €30 (EUR, not USD) and time on going to Apple shop and installing "new" OS just to gain 1 second in shutdown time.

You might want to read the article a little more carefully, if that is all you were able to glean from it.

quote:

why do you think that all Mac users also use iLife and iWork? I have never used any of the iLife features and so I do not see any point in upgrading it. And I don't even have iWork, since OpenOffice.org is a lot better and free alternative. OpenOffice.org is also available for Windows and Linux, so it makes switching between different OSes a lot simpler.

If you've "never used any of the iLife features" and you "don't even have iWork", then maybe you're not the best person to be offering advice on that?

Just a comment on LLVM performance. For memory intensive code (such as a vector update), LLVM is half the speed of GCC on C++ code. For C code (same operation), GCC is the fastest, then Clang, then LLVM.

Holy Christmas Tree, Batman! For those of us who like to print articles to read on the morning commute, could a PDF be provided, or links to make this a master document for printing efficiently? Thanks.

Originally posted by asallese:Holy Christmas Tree, Batman! For those of us who like to print articles to read on the morning commute, could a PDF be provided, or links to make this a master document for printing efficiently? Thanks.

I think you need to be a subscriber to access the pdf-versions of the articles.

As it says in the article, Clang's C++ frontend is rather immature compared to the C and Objective-C ones. For obvious reasons, as Apple has least invested in C++ code.

In your C example (where I'm guessing memory latency is the primary determinant), where Clang and GCC appear to be performing about the same, Clang is still a net win because of the far more sophisticated static analysis and error reporting it does.

Originally posted by andgarden:leaving QuickTime in its current state of limbo.

?

QTKit has been around since 2005, and the swapping behind the scenes is transparent to the user between Quicktime 7 and Quicktime X.

The article makes quite clear that Quicktime (the technology and brand name) is going nowhere, so what are you talking about?

The fact that, to do some basic editing or watch certain types of movies (that use widely available plugins), I have to switch back to a deprecated player that isn't installed by default. The new Quick Time is not even close to complete.

That isn't true, the 'classic' back end is installed by default, it's only the old player app that isn't.

Originally posted by Junkie256:I think you are wrong to say that purchasers of the $29 version are in violation of the EULA by installing on 10.4, even though Apple would like you to think this. After looking closely at the EULA and the packaging for Snow Leopard I think it would be really hard for Apple to claim that a user buying the $29 version of the product and installing it on a 10.4 system has violated the EULA.

The EULA refers to basically four versions of the software: single-user, family pack, and upgrade versions of each. While a sales rep in the Apple store may say you are buying an upgrade version, it would be really hard for Apple to claim that this is the upgrade version when no where on the package does it say "upgrade". If it does not say upgrade on the package, it is more than reasonable for the user to assume that he or she bought the non-upgrade version and based on that it can be installed on 10.4 without any kind of license violation. It does not matter what they say about it, what matters is on the box.

Apple did the right thing by making one version and making it widely available but there is no way for them to make this clause enforceable. They didn't actually make the upgrade versions they refer to in the EULA, if they intended to make them then they did not mark them sufficiently to indicate these are, in license terms, upgrades and not the plain old single-user versions referred to in the EULA. I would just tell people that if they buy a version and it does not say upgrade on it then they reasonably could install it on any Intel mac as the license says they can.

That's the weird thing about the packaging. Nowhere on the outside of my still shrink wrapped box does it say that it requires any certain version of OSX to legally install. It only lists the hardware needed to run it. Kind of weird they didn't write it on the outside isn't it?

If someone hadn't heard online or elsewhere that the EULA states Leopard is a requirement for the install a user would tear the shrinkwrap off and open the box. At that point most retailers would consider that a final sale and wouldn't accept a return if you decided to then heed the enclosed EULA.

If I was still on Tiger I wouldn't feel obligated to buy Leopard in addition to SL. Seems if that is what they want they need to revise the packaging. Otherwise change the enclosed EULA.

Originally posted by andgarden:leaving QuickTime in its current state of limbo.

?

QTKit has been around since 2005, and the swapping behind the scenes is transparent to the user between Quicktime 7 and Quicktime X.

The article makes quite clear that Quicktime (the technology and brand name) is going nowhere, so what are you talking about?

The fact that, to do some basic editing or watch certain types of movies (that use widely available plugins), I have to switch back to a deprecated player that isn't installed by default. The new Quick Time is not even close to complete.

That isn't true, the 'classic' back end is installed by default, it's only the old player app that isn't.

You apparently have a different definition of "isn't true" than I do.

Technically Octogon is correct (The *best* kind of correct!). Your statement isn't true. Your statement has some parts that are true, and some parts that are not true - turning the whole statement to "not true".

"The fact that, to do some basic editing or watch certain types of movies (that use widely available plugins), I have to switch back to a deprecated player that isn't installed by default."

Taken as a whole, incorrect. Separately,

"The fact that, to do some basic editing, I have to switch back to a deprecated player that isn't installed by default."Is true, with varying definitions of the term basic editing. There is some basic editing in the new QuicktimeX player, but it's less basic editing then the old Quicktime 7 Player.

"The fact that, to do watch certain types of movies (that use widely available plugins), I have to switch back to a deprecated player that isn't installed by default."Is not true. Quicktime X player will play those old codecs. Internally it will use the old QuickTime 7 backend, but is transparent to the user.

At least that is my interpretation of the comments in "The Review", and other sources I have seen.

On page two of this most wonderful article (Sorry, just started reading...) there's a side note to non-Mac users regarding the "Honor" system of who is legit and who is keeping track of legit OS users, which ends with the following sentence:

"This is considered a genuine advantage of Mac OS X, but it also means that Apple has no reliable record of who, exactly, is a "legitimate" owner of Leopard."

Now, on release day, Friday, August the 28th, when I went over to buy my own copy of Snow Leopard at my local Apple Store, after handing in my plastic over to them, they specifically addressed me by my name and asked me if I wanted a copy of the receipt to be sent to my e-mail address.

This has happened before, believe it or not!

When I switched over from my 17" PowerBook G4 to my Intel-based iMac running Leopard, when I bought my iPhone 3G... and it continues to happen every time I purchase anything and everything (Including apps, iTunes songs, etc.) from them!

Now, are you telling me that they have no idea or records of my past 10 year purchasing history of Apple products or services?

And I am sure that even if you are paying with cash, someone at the Apple store will ask you for some info about yourself, such as your name, school ID (For free iPod deals) proof of being a teacher (Again, for discounts), your e-mail addy, etc., etc., and in turn input that info into a database for their records.

Unfortunately for you, it's the fanboys who write all your applications, so it's not like you'll really have a choice.

I am not very demanding, all I need is FireFox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Eclipse and VLC and these aren't applications developed by people you would call Apple fanboys. I use my MacBook mainly as netbook, most of the work I still do on PC.

quote:

Originally posted by Jeppe Utzon:

quote:

Originally posted by hanzoff:So basically this is a must have for fanboys, but the average user has no need for it? Sorry, but I am not going to spend €30 (EUR, not USD) and time on going to Apple shop and installing "new" OS just to gain 1 second in shutdown time.

You might want to read the article a little more carefully, if that is all you were able to glean from it.

But then maybe you could enlighten me? I do not need that few extra GB it would save me, I have no need for the micro optimizations, since I still do most of my work on good old Windows, and I hate the fact that it now thinks that 1000 MB = 1 GB.

quote:

Originally posted by Jeppe Utzon:

quote:

why do you think that all Mac users also use iLife and iWork? I have never used any of the iLife features and so I do not see any point in upgrading it. And I don't even have iWork, since OpenOffice.org is a lot better and free alternative. OpenOffice.org is also available for Windows and Linux, so it makes switching between different OSes a lot simpler.

If you've "never used any of the iLife features" and you "don't even have iWork", then maybe you're not the best person to be offering advice on that?

If you're going to troll you could at least do it properly.

So if someone has never used iLife and does not have iWork then he should not be allowed to upgrade to Snow Leopard from Tiger? Or should be forced to upgrade iLife and get iWork together with the upgrade of OS?

quote:

Originally posted by gypsumfantastic:The problem with attempting to troll geeks by claiming that OpenOffice is in some way 'better' is a flawed strategy- because we've used it.

and when did you last "use" it? OpenOffice.org 3(.1) has changed a lot and is much better than before.

quote:

Originally posted by gypsumfantastic:And I don't trust somebody who claims to be a Mac owner who doesn't use iPhoto and iMovie. You people are just weird.

I keep most of my photos on my PC, it is way cheaper to buy 1 TB HDD for a PC than for a MacBook and desktop computer is much less likely to be stolen or break.

Originally posted by TheFerenc:Am I the only person who uses their dock on the side of the screen? With the dock over there, the new menus actually match the dock perfectly.

This has been posted all over the tubes since Leopard, but here's how to have the "2D" look with the dock on the bottom:

open a terminal and write defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock. Wouldn't have it any other way

I set my dock that way a day or two after Leopard was released. It looks so much better that I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't gone with it by default.

Excellent review as always (I've been reading them since you first started). I don't even bother doing more than skimming other reviews because nearly all of them seem to boil down to a copy/paste from Apple's OS X PR info.

The Mac has four modifier keys that are used in most applications to trigger different functionality. You might have more fun with the Mac experience if you actually learn what they are and how they are used within most applications. Similarly, on Windows things go smoother if you figure out how to use the second mouse button to trigger drag actions and how its modifier keys work. When I used UNIX the machines had three or more mouse buttons.

Command triggers menu equivalents when used with a key and triggers random multi-selection when used with mouse selection. Option triggers alternate characters (like the copyright symbol and accents) when used with a key, triggers copies on drag operations, holding it down when switching apps hides the previous app. Shift triggers capital letters when used with a key and triggers contiguous multi-selection when used with mouse selection. Ctrl triggers the context menu when used with the mouse. Option, Shift and Ctrl also modify many menu equivalents.

In professional applications like PhotoShop or InDesign all of the modifiers are used to allow for very fast manipulation of the program. Watch a skilled PhotoShop user some time and you will see that they chord the modifier keys with one hand while using the mouse in the other.

Originally posted by gypsumfantastic:Regarding OOo, better is still nowhere near "good".

I guess this is a matter of personal taste, I like it and it meets my requirements, so I have no need for MS Office or iWork.

quote:

Originally posted by gypsumfantastic:Perhaps your workflow is different from mine, but when I go merrily a-photographing, I tend to have my MBP with me, whilst my desktop stays firmly rooted at home, so all my photos end up in iPhoto.

Of course, all my photos are backed up to my Time Capsule once I return.

Photography isn't one of my interests, I rarely take pictures, so I have no need for a program like iPhoto.

John Siracusa / John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.